


Never Imagined Someone Like You

by Elster



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Asexual Romance, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-18
Updated: 2011-04-18
Packaged: 2017-10-18 08:34:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/186973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elster/pseuds/Elster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It is strange – unsettling; the suspicion that something is wrong with the world. Like a law of physic has been broken and now reality is showing cracks." -- (Or, to put it more prosaic: John rocks Sherlock's world.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Imagined Someone Like You

It is strange – unsettling; the suspicion that something is wrong with the world. Like a law of physic has been broken and now reality is showing cracks. It is huge and imperceptible, inexplicable.

 

Sherlock lies awake in the dark, listening to noises upstairs. John will be quiet for an hour or two, then there are muffled sounds, sometimes a few discernible words, sometimes a shout, but nothing conclusive, soft squeaking noises when John shifts on the bed, a few steps on creaky floor boards when he gets up. Nightmares, no mystery. John doesn't come down.

Sherlock feels his heart beating too fast. Maybe he is terrified. It doesn't make sense.

 

Before John he'd had his life sorted out. It wasn't perfect, but it was in control, it was his. For the first time since early childhood he'd had a feeling of stability, a balance that wasn't taking hard work or hard drugs to maintain.

He would move into Mrs Hudson's house. She could look after him enough for Mycroft to back off a little. Lestrade would continue to let him be the world's only consulting detective and to roll his eyes in amused exasperation when he used the title. It was good.

Sherlock would have puzzles to occupy his mind, he would be right and extraordinary and remembered for it.  
This, he felt, was what he could expect from life. This he could manage without getting too high or too low for too long. This was possible. This was independence. The very best he could do. The top of the world.

 

Sometimes, when John doesn't have time to come along on a case, Sherlock finds himself looking over his shoulder, intending to share a grin or a raised eyebrow, before he remembers with a peculiar mix of annoyance and what he can only term fondness. He finds himself impatient for John to join him in the chase or to come home so Sherlock can at least tell him his more interesting deductions. He finds himself smiling at John's praise.

 

The old plan is inconceivable now. Somehow wrong. He remembers it, he knows how he felt when he thought that this was what he wanted for the rest of his life. There is no obvious error, the old plan was sound, and yet, when he thinks about it now, it is undesirable, constricted. The world has shifted, he reminds himself, physical laws have changed. It has grown and stretched, might be expanding still, and Sherlock is searching for a fixed point. He wished he knew how to live in this new impossible world.

 

John abuses punctuation marks in his e-mails and texts to form silly smiley faces. It is an appalling habit so Sherlock can't explain why they always make him smile back at his phone. John does it even on paper sometimes, when he writes notes for Sherlock. Still with the 90 degree tilt like he had to use a colon and a bracket. That is reassuring, Sherlock thinks, because he has composed a sonata for John and the melody is stuck in his head, but when he plays for him Sherlock uses the tunes of dead composers, never his own.

 

There is an additional dimension now and somehow it is John's fault. The old plan had two parts: death and the time until then. Sherlock knew it was likely he'd meet a violent and comparably early death. He didn't dwell on it, the thought never held much interest. He'd like something suitably dramatic, but figured that in the end it wouldn't matter to him for obvious reasons. So that was the old plan: an abruptly ending present of unknown length that had to be filled with activity.

The plan was too small for John and all the eventualities he brings with him. It's more complicated now and there is a distinct factor of time. The 'when' suddenly matters and the 'how'. It is not all one indiscernible present until it ends, there are points of interest inbetween, a future, and it is suddenly important and shifting; everything seems uncertain.

 

There's a storm outside in the night when John comes down into the living room. Sherlock feels a sense of relief, because he couldn't hear the sounds of John's nightmares over the howling wind. There's a case to solve, he should have the vital clues, but is missing a connection and can't seem to concentrate tonight. He lifts his feet so that John can sit, then lets them drop back to lie on his thighs. John doesn't protest, just takes the blanket he threw over Sherlock earlier and drags it down a bit so it covers his own legs, too.

Sherlock wriggles one of his cold feet into the toasty heat between John's jumper and the old t-shirt he wears in bed, and suddenly finds the words 'don't ever leave me' on the tip of his tongue. It's not the first time, sometimes he types them on his mobile, but he never says them and never sends them. It is, he feels, not a request anyone should make. One day he might say 'I've been unhappy without you', which he'd found to be true after due consideration. But what comes out now, after a long inner struggle, sounds like something Mycroft would say.

“I have never regretted the inherent transiency of circumstances like I do in your presence.” Sherlock frowns into the darkness where the words hang, awkward and clunky, and curses his cowardice.

John yawns. “Sorry,” he says then, or maybe asks, softly and with a confused little laugh.

“No,” Sherlock says hastily, “don't be.”

John hums, only half awake, and tugs Sherlock's second foot closer to pull the jumper over it, too. “Tell me about the case.”

So Sherlock does, he works through the evidence methodically, voice quiet and sentences a little slower than usual. When he finds the solution, John is asleep, head on the backrest and one warm hand curled around Sherlock's ankle. Sherlock stares into the darkness and feels the world settle. John is snoring softly with his head bent backwards like this, rain is beating against the windows, and in this moment everything seems to fall into place. Sherlock is in the soft, unreliable state between sleep and conscious thought when, for the first time in months, the world seems to make sense again.


End file.
